Kathryn Rossetter, who co-starred with Hoffman in Death of a Salesman on Broadway, says the Oscar-winner would grope her nightly, demand foot rubs and once pulled her slip over her head to expose her breasts in front of the crew.Arthur Mola - Invision - AP

Celebrity

Hoffman accused of ‘horrific experience’

The New York Post reports, Actress Kathryn Rossetter, who co-starred with Hoffman in TV and Broadway productions of "Death of a Salesman," penned a first-person account of the alleged harassment in The Hollywood Reporter, describing it as a "horrific, demoralising and abusive experience at the hands (literally) of one of my acting idols."

Rossetter said Hoffman repeatedly groped her backstage during performances of "Death of a Salesman" in the early '80s, slipping his hands underneath her slip as she waited in the wings for a cue to laugh.

The first time it happened, she felt his hand on her thighs and was "completely surprised and tried to bat him away," she said.

"One night he actually started to stick his fingers inside me. Night after night I went home and cried. I withdrew and got depressed and did not have any good interpersonal relationships with the cast."

"Whenever he had a picture taken with me, he would put his arm around my rib cage and then grab my breast just before they snapped the picture and then remove it. He was very skilled at dropping his hand just as the picture snapped to avoid it being recorded," she recalled.

"Only by luck do I have one such picture - where the camera caught him in the act. A picture I had taken with hopes of sending it to my family. A millisecond in time.

"There I am - big smile and my arm moving toward his with the intention to push it away. But caught as it is, it seems I'm complicit with the gesture. I was not. Not ever."

Hoffman also demanded she give him foot rubs, encouraging her to rub "higher, higher," she said.

"I didn't do it. I would stop at his calves," Rossetter said. "I understand how women say they just go inside themselves to another place as a form of protection, to distance themselves from the abuse. I felt trapped."

At one point, Hoffman pulled Rossetter's slip over her head backstage, exposing her naked body to the crew and causing her to miss a cue.

"When at last I found an opportunity, I pushed Dustin up against the wall screaming, 'F-k you! How would you like it if someone did that to you before you walked out on stage every night, Mr. Method Actor?'" she said.

He stopped for three days, "then it was back to groping as usual," Rossetter alleged.

The actress said she became so fed up with Hoffman groping her when they took photos together that she grabbed his crotch in one shot. That photo ended up in Playboy magazine.

"There in the back was a picture of me and Dustin and the other actress and I am apparently, gleefully grabbing his genitalia," she wrote. "Yes, the millisecond had caught the act. But it hadn't captured the story. The caption was to indicate how fun-loving we serious theatre people are."